The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

Charles Dickens's first published work, The Pickwick Papers was an instant success that captured the public imagination with its colourful characters and farcical plot. This Penguin Classics edition of Charles Dickens's is edited with notes and an introduction by Mark Wormald.Few first novels have created as much popular excitement as The Pickwick Papers - a comic masterpiece that catapulted its twenty-four-year-old author to immediate fame. Readers were captivated by the adventures of the poet Snodgrass, the lover Tupman, the sportsman Winkle and, above all, by that quintessentially English Quixote, Mr Pickwick, and his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller. From the hallowed turf of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy fracas of the Eatanswill election, via the Fleet debtors' prison, characters and incidents spring to life from Dickens's pen, to form an enduringly popular work of ebullient humour and literary invention.This edition is based on the first volume edition of 1837, and includes the original illustrations. In his introduction, Mark Wormald discusses the genesis of The Pickwick Papers and the emergence of its central characters.Charles Dickens is one of the best-loved novelists in the English language, whose 200th anniversary was celebrated in 2012. His most famous books, including Oliver Twist , Great Expectations , A Tale of Two Cities , David Copperfield and The Pickwick Papers , have been adapted for stage and screen and read by millions.If you enjoyed The Pickwick Papers , you might like Dickens's A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings, also available in Penguin Classics.

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The Pickwick Papers, (or rather The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club) although not Dickens' best work, is still a wonderful novel. The writing isn't as consistently good as it is in his later novels, but none of the writing is bad, and there are several flashes of brilliance which seem to herald what Dickens' would become when his genius had time to ripen.

"I shall never regret," said Mr. Pickwick in a low voice--"I shall never regret having devoted the greater part of two years to mixing with different varieties and shades of human character, frivolous as my pursuit of novelty may have appeared to many."
Dickens's first novel, which like many of his books, was published in serial form. Episodic and loosely structured, "Pickwick" is amusing and light, with hints of the darker turn his later novels would take (social issues, a court case that anticipates "Bleak House"). The influence of Smollett, Sterne, and Fielding is fairly clear, but it also shows Dickens discovering his all-embracing imaginative powers and deft character sketches. Not for the Dickens novice. Followed by his first great novel, "Oliver Twist."

Picaresque, humane, light and humourous. While not as dark as Dicken's later works, some of the literary themes he returned to are there from the beginning. An episodic satire based on accute observations of society and social norms including: courting, politics, families, debtors prisons and the bottomless tar-pit that is the Law.